Joao Lucio's photostream  

I'm an amateur photographer. I never took a photography class. Everything I learned was through books, self study and watching the pictures of my contacts at Flickr.com.

I enjoy photography since my father gave me a Minolta film camera in the 90’s. After I broke it on a trip through Australia and Papua New Guinea in 2000, I bought another film camera, this time, a Ricoh. On a trip to China in 2004, I had my first contact with digital point and shoot cameras. These kind of cameras were very expensive in Brazil at this time, so, I had the opportunity of buying one in China (much cheaper). My first one was a Sony Cybershot that I bought in Shanghai. I don't have to say that I loved digital photography. Everything was much easier than film cameras. Digital photography is so flexible. Just amazing. At the end of 2004, on a trip to USA, I decided to upgrade my tired Sony Cybershot by a Canon SD400. I loved the Canon cameras and decided to stick to this brand. Back to China in 2006, I decided to seriously invest in this hobby and upgraded my Canon point and shoot to an SLR: a Canon 30D. I have it until today.

After buying your first SLR camera, your life changes completely. This kind of camera gives you so much control and possibilities over your photos that you start thinking how you could have survived without having this kind of camera before. My Canon 30D came with a 17-85mm F4-5.6 lens, which I happily used until I discovered the existence of the fast lenses: the ones with F2.8 aperture or higher. Oh… again… your life changes after having an F2.8 lens. Having this in mind and following the suggestions of every professional photographer I heard and photography books I read, I decided to invest in better lenses instead of better camera bodies (better “glass”, as the serious photographers says). In my opinion, there is no reason to have a state of the art camera body if you keep using those cheap, plastic lenses that came together with your camera kit. Just throw them away and think seriously in investing in better glass.

I love to travel as well. I travel as much as I can and to as many places as possible. Travel and photography are complementary subjects and the perfect trip is that one full of interesting subjects to be photographed and good experiences to be shared with your loved ones. Luckily, my wife loves to travel as well and she is always ready for our next adventure around the world.

Currently, I use the following equipment:

Canon 30D
Canon 17-85mm F4-5.6 IS USM
Canon 10-22mm F3.5-4.5 USM
Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS USM
Canon 24-70mm F2.8 USM
Canon 50mm F1.4 USM

I like landscape, wide angle photography as well as portrait and street photography in general. Trying to decide yet which one I should invest more time on it. Maybe you can help me commenting on my photos here on Flickr.com. I also like the dramatic skies that can be obtained through the use of polarizer filters and HDR photography (Photomatix is King!).